Call Your Senators to Oppose the Nomination of Mike Pompeo for Secretary of State

Call your senators to oppose the nomination of Mike Pompeo for Secretary of State.

First, some background: Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on March 13, 2018, in a move that surprised no one except Tillerson, and he quickly nominated Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA, to replace him.

Unlike other posts close to Trump, Pompeo will have to face confirmation hearings in the Senate. (Despite the way Trump moves people around in his administration, being confirmed by the Senate for one job does not transfer to any subsequent high-level jobs.)

Pompeo should not have been CIA director, and he should not become secretary of state. He believes in a form of evangelical Christianity that makes him view Christian-Muslim relations as something out of the Crusades, and not something more appropriate to 2018. Separation of church and state is already a problem for this guy; he should not be in charge of managing how America deals with Muslim-led countries.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Pompeo holds dangerously retrograde views on LGBT rights, and pretty much the rights of anyone who isn’t straight, white, Christian, male, and able-bodied. He’s the sort of Christian that Christopher Stroop has doggedly warned us all about. He should not get this job, no matter how much Trump likes him personally.

The GOP holds a Senate majority by a painfully narrow 51-49 margin (the two Independent senators caucus with the Democrats), and Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky has already said he will vote against Pompeo for Secretary of State as well as voting against Pompeo’s proposed replacement at the CIA, Gina Haspel (we at OTYCD are prepping a separate post on her).

This Washington Post story quotes Paul as saying he “cannot endorse [Trump’s] nomination of people who loved the Iraq War so much that they want an Iran War next.”

Paul’s refusal is helpful, but it’s no guarantee that Pompeo’s nomination for Secretary of State will fail. When the Senate confirmed Pompeo to his CIA post last year, it wasn’t all that contentious. He succeeded with a vote of 66 for, 32 against. (Paul voted against Pompeo as CIA director, and was the only Republican to vote no on that nomination.)

The following Democrats and Independents voted for Pompeo as CIA director in 2017:

Joe Donnelly of Indiana

Dianne Feinstein of California

Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire

Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota

Tim Kaine of Virginia

Angus King of Maine

Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota

Joe Manchin of West Virginia

Claire McCaskill of Missouri

Jack Reed of Rhode Island

Brian Schatz of Hawaii

Chuck Schumer of New York

Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire

Mark Warner of Virginia

Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island

Two other Democratic senators, both from Connecticut, did not vote because of a winter storm that stopped them from arriving in time to participate: Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal.

We at OTYCD are asking you to call your senators and ask them to vote no on Pompeo for Secretary of State.

Suggested script: “Dear Senator [Lastname], I am [Firstname Lastname from town, state], I am calling to ask you to vote against Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. Pompeo is a committed theocrat who privileges his religious views of the world, and would rely on them as Secretary of State. If he’s appointed, he will almost certainly complicate and worsen our relations with Muslim-led nations, such as Iran and Iraq. Anyone who has as much trouble as Pompeo has with separating church and state should not become Secretary of State, a post that is all about diplomacy. Again, I urge you to vote against his nomination. Thank you.”

Read a CNN piece on the firing of Tillerson, which includes an acknowledgement that Trump has long wanted to replace him with Pompeo: